Conference Session

Capstone & Educational Resource Developments

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Zekeriya Aliyazicioglu

the undergraduate curriculum of the Electrical and ComputerDepartment, the Engineering Technology Department and the Computer Science Department.Our proposal, “Deep Space Exploration using Smart Robotic Rovers”, was selected for fundingand we established our first interdisciplinary team of students and faculty to develop a smartrobotic rover.During the last two years, students and faculty participating in this program have developed arobotic rover that has successfully accomplished the initial goals of the project. The rover iscapable of climbing 30o inclines, rotating about its center axis, strafing, and maneuveringdiagonally while maintaining stability. It was also designed to protect the vital internalcomponents from outside contaminants

Conference Session

Innovative Ideas for Energy Labs

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

James Johnson; Donatus Cobbinah; Ahmed Rubaai

junior-and senior-levelundergraduate lecture classes.1 BackgroundIn recent years there have been enormous financial pressures on engineering departmentsstruggling to deliver to increased enrollments, unchanging budgets, and the need to maintaineducational quality. As departments look for ways to cut costs, hands-on instructionallaboratories, typically expensive to develop and maintain, are slowly being replaced withsimulated experiments [1-3]. While simulations are an important component for teachingstudents about general system behavior, they cannot always account for all the details that mustbe considered in designing and analyzing a physical system in an interdisciplinary, team-orientedenvironment. Furthermore, a laboratory curriculum based

Conference Session

NSF Grantees Poster Session

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Nirmal Khandan

that it is asummative evaluation of engineering education and is a prerequisite for professional licensure,such poor performance is alarming. This paper presents a computer-based system that has thepotential to improve and assess problem-solving skills of engineering students.Literature ReviewThe importance of conceptual knowledge as one of the prerequisites for expert-like problem-solving has been recognized in several studies [5-11]. Dufresne et al [9, 11] have proposed amodel for problem solving, identifying three key knowledges: i) concept knowledge, ii)operational/procedural knowledge, and iii) problem-state knowledge. According to this model,the conceptual knowledge of an expert is richly clustered and hierarchically arranged with

Conference Session

Innovative Graduate Programs & Methods

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Kevin Brewer; Johannes Boehme; Glenda Scales; Cheryl Peed

curriculum; complyingwith graduate school policy and procedures; and recruiting faculty and students. Glenda Scales,associate dean for distance learning and computing in the College of Engineering at VirginiaTech, and John Boehme, associate dean for Academic Computing and information sciences atWake Forest University School of Medicine, were co-project leaders for launching the distancelearning infrastructure in support of the SBES program.The vision for the technical team was to provide and maintain an advanced stable network and astate-of-the-art distance learning environment between Virginia Tech and the Wake ForestUniversity School of Medicine that promotes educational excellence. Specific goals for theinstructional technology team were

Conference Session

Innovative Techniques

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Jason Trabert; Lawrence Carlson

of engineers from relevant industries to provideadvice and help guide their programs. At the University of Colorado at Boulder, for example, ourIndustrial Advisory Committee (IAC) meets semiannually. At a recent IAC meeting, theimportance of including GD&T in the ME curriculum was reiterated.Companies typically send design engineers to intense courses to learn GD&T, often as long as 40hours, which is approximately as many contact hours as a typical three credit-hour universitysemester course. Such a course is typically supported by a comprehensive reference text such asFoster.1 On-line GD&T courses are also available.2A logical place to introduce GD&T is in a first-year design graphics course. However, with thesignificant

Conference Session

BME Research and Design

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Blair Rowley

from the students. The seniors’ response varied from dislike toenjoyment. The freshmen reported in increased interest in engineering due to the interaction withthe seniors.MethodologyThe overall goals for this teaming effort were: 1. Provide the seniors an opportunity to practice team leadership skills 2. Have seniors apply design tools learned in class to an actual problem 3. Meet the senior writing across the curriculum requirement through the project report 4. Provide the freshmen with upper classmen contact on a project 5. Expose freshmen to the design processAt week six the freshmen were introduced to their final project and divided into teams so thateach senior could be assigned as the team leader. The freshmen were

Conference Session

ECE Online Courses, Labs, and Programs

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Rasha Morsi; Wael Ibrahim

Online Engineering Education: A Comprehensive Review Wael Ibrahim, Rasha Morsi ECPI College of Technology/Norfolk State UniversityAbstractDevelopment and assessment of synchronous and asynchronous distance learning curricula is anever growing research due to the new emerging virtual universities. Recent reports confirm thefast growth in online education at an even higher rate than anticipated by educational institutions.The suitability of online learning to engineering disciplines however has been questioned. Thispaper researches online degree granting institutions and attempts to gain an insight in the growthof online education and its correlation with engineering

Conference Session

Computer & Web-Based Instruction

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Peter Rhode; Allen Jaedike; Michael Hennessey

, 2001.[13] Nikolic, V., “Pro/engineer and I-DEAS based courses favorite among mechanical engineering students,” ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition, New Orleans, LA, November 17- 22, 2002.[14] Ray, J. and J. Farris, “Integration of design and manufacturing processes in first-year engineering curriculums,” 30th Annual Frontiers in Education Conference – Building on a Century of Progress in Engineering Education, Kansas City, MO, October 18-21, 2000.[15] Jensen, G. C., J. D. Haslam, J. A. Hoech, and M. B. Thompson, “Project based Computer-Aided- Engineering Applications,” 30th Annual Frontiers in Education Conference – Building on a Century of Progress in

Conference Session

Engineering Education Research and Assessment II

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Mary Nelson; Barbara Olds; Monica Geist; Ronald Miller; Ruth Streveler

at Manoa. She also holds aMaster of Science in Zoology from the Ohio State University and a Bachelor of Arts in Biologyfrom Indiana University at Bloomington. She is co-principle investigator of three NSF-sponsored projects: Developing an Outcomes Assessment Instrument for Identifying EngineeringStudent Misconceptions in Thermal and Transport Sciences (DUE - 0127806), Center for theAdvancement of Engineering Education (ESI-0227558), and Rigorous Research in EngineeringEducation: Creating a Community of Practice (DUE-0341127).BARBARA M. OLDS is Professor of Liberal Arts and International Studies at the ColoradoSchool of Mines. She has participated in a number of curriculum innovation projects and hasbeen active in the engineering education

Conference Session

Project Management and Team Issues

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Sandra Furterer; Lesia Crumpton-Young

. P.O. Box 162993 Orlando, FL 32816-2993 furterer@mail.ucf.eduAbstract:The Industrial Engineering and Management Systems Department at the University of CentralFlorida has incorporated service experiential learning opportunities into the curriculum within aTotal Quality Improvement course. This graduate level course teaches the Six Sigma body ofknowledge, including quality management principles and problem solving tools. It provides just-in-time experiential learning opportunities to reinforce the in-class instruction. This paper willprovide examples of Six Sigma tools applied in the project case studies including Voice of theCustomer, Design of Experiments, and

Conference Session

Faculty Development II

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Jason Keith; Adrienne Minerick

why. In order for thenew professor to smoothly integrate their course into the culture of the department, theauthors also suggest gaining familiarity with the entire departmental curriculum. Oneway to do this is review prerequisite classes with faculty or to read through the last ABETpacket submitted.During this information gathering phase, it may be beneficial to ask what worked andwhat did not work. For example, after teaching his course for one year, JMK realized thathis students had difficulty applying mathematical concepts to course material,particularly on exams. This may have been avoided by finding out more information fromother faculty prior to the start of the semester.To try to alleviate the problem, a handout was prepared for

Conference Session

Energy Projects and Laboratory Ideas

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Philip Gerhart; Andrew Gerhart

paper are threefold. First, undergraduate students that have used theRankine Cycler were surveyed to assess the effectiveness of the device as a learning tool. Theresults of the survey can be applied so that the equipment is used in the undergraduatecurriculum in the best possible manner.Inevitably, when a power generation plant is scaled-down and it has few efficiency-enhancingcomponents (e.g. lack of feedwater heaters, etc.), energy losses in components will be magnified,substantially decreasing the cycle efficiency. Although the Rankine Cycler is a useful tool forteaching fundamentals of thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, heat transfer, and instrumentationsystems in an undergraduate laboratory, a comprehensive analysis of the equipment has not

Conference Session

Electrical & Computer Engineering Poster Session

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Shumon Alam; Matthew Sadiku; Cajetan Akujuobi

premier telecommunication companies in the area of interoperability andreliability studies. It is also used for the training of our students in this emerging area oftechnology and for research, especially, the Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) modem technology.DSL is a new technology for providing higher data rates over the twisted telephone copper wire.The Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) is one of the first derivatives of this DSLtechnology. The DSL Forum has defined an ADSL interoperability test specification, known asTR-048, which is supported by all key Service Providers, access IC manufacturers andIndependent Test Labs. This research project follows the test plan TR-048 to produce a completeautomated testing suit, which can be used in